Leisure ultimately
turns into a race.
The finish line
quickly approaches,
whether you are running
or you're crawling.

You can't take your gold pieces to grave.
You can't take your Tesla to your grave.
You can't take your Insta to grave.
You can't take your follows to your grave.

With a finger dipped in inky blood,
I trace the bright dots cross obsidian,
Charting for another loser driven by,
and in pursuit of the touch of love.

I can't take my hot heart into earth.
I can't take my friends closer to burn.
I can't take my fever dream to death.
I can't take the love that ails me,

but it filled me, and fills me,
and if it kills me,
what better a way?

I kept reaching further
Further down and deeper
Into my soul
Scratching
For bits of gold
Scratching from inside
Hacking off small pieces of life
Excavate cravingly
Hungry for a piece of myself that meant something
A piece that was worth something
So I could exchange it for forbidden pleasures
Scratch and scrape everyday
Wounding and eating like a pig, any day
Rainy or foggy
Blue or yellow
I scratched and degraded
Until nothing remained
but a shadow
An empty husk
that was once I
Remains
Remnants of myself

Faith is a golden coil
That fits so greatly in the binding
Of texts that
Dictate a non-universal
Truth
Faith is a silver coil
That wraps around you nicely
Tightly
When times are hard and
Icy
Faith is a copper coil,
Cheap, commonly used and
Slithers, a bronze snaking cloud
Seeping quickly into
Permeable minds
Faith is an aluminum coil,
The easy way out.
Steals from your conscious
What can be found in
Yourself
Faith is essential
Needed to man
And to man armies
Unable to feel soft,
Cotton-ball faith
Anymore


Cameron Bell, Copyright © 2019

You know how when you break open
some rocks you find crystal?
My heart is like that
break it open and you will find
all my love for you

I'm like a geode
I seem ugly and hollow at first
but after you break me apart
you will see all the treasure in me
that was hidden on the surface

Only now it is no longer yours
every touch from then on
turns my crystals to rust
one shard at a time

A geode turned to coal
for the next heartbreak
to reveal my hidden gold

It was great
to be king
but I don't have the power

to stop the end
they undress me completely
and smear me with grease

with pipes, they blow dust gold
on me, they cover me
with years of envy

The procession leads me
to the throne on the raft
it is a ruthless play

Shining in the light
of my father, the sun
I float across the lake

to lurking eyes
on the other side
that would come to skin me

if I didn't have a wash
and hastily gave the sun
to the greedy water

the sun roared with intensity
turning ebony skins golden
twelve bodies, littered on the ground
empty cases of flesh bereft of life
blood dripping out of their wounds,
seeping into the Earth's rich soil
a deep shade of brown, like their skin
around them children kneel
hollow cheeks damp with tears
as they mourn those before them
souls that once walked the earth
but never will no more
and their brothers, with skins
a light contrast to their dark ones
roams the same earth freely
fingernails caked with dried blood and
blood on their pale feet
like red wine on white silk
yet no one  bats an eye
nor do they raise a finger
their whispers never turning
into rage fueled shouts
for their own children are safe,
nestled  under their covers
certain that tomorrow
the day after tomorrow
and all the tomorrows to come
they shall walk free and unharmed
unlike the bodies on the ground
even as they leave a trail of red
b e h i n d  t h e m